#moonbound wes

[kesia-stupid-arts]

Finally, after all those years, I have them both...

[em0-alpaca]

moonbound wx-78

[nasa]

Moonbound: One Year Since Artemis I

On this day last year, the Artemis I rocket and spacecraft lit up the sky and embarked on the revolutionary mission to the Moon and back. The first integrated flight test of the rocket and spacecraft continued for 25.5 days, validating NASA’s deep exploration systems and setting the stage for humanity’s return to the lunar surface.

On Nov. 16, 2022, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket met or exceeded all expectations during its debut launch on Artemis I. The twin solid rocket booster motors responsible for producing more than 7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff reached their performance target, helping SLS and the Orion spacecraft reach a speed of about 4,000 mph in just over two minutes before the boosters separated.

Quite a few payloads caught a ride aboard the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis I mission: In addition to a number of small scientific satellites called CubeSats, a manikin named Commander Moonikin Campos sat in the commander’s seat. A Snoopy doll served as a zero-gravity indicator — something that floats inside the spacecraft to demonstrate microgravity. 

During the mission, Orion performed two lunar flybys, coming within 80 miles of the lunar surface. At its farthest distance during the mission, Orion traveled nearly 270,000 miles from our home planet, more than 1,000 times farther than where the International Space Station orbits Earth. This surpassed the record for distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans, previously set during Apollo 13.

The Orion spacecraft arrived back home to planet Earth on Dec. 11, 2022. During re-entry, Orion endured temperatures about half as hot as the surface of the Sun at about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Within about 20 minutes, Orion slowed from nearly 25,000 mph to about 20 mph for its parachute-assisted splashdown. 

Recovery teams successfully retrieved the spacecraft and delivered it back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for de-servicing operations, which included removing the payloads (like Snoopy and Commander Moonikin Campos) and analyzing the heat shield.  

With the Artemis I mission under our belt, we look ahead to Artemis II — our first crewed mission to the Moon in over 50 years. Four astronauts will fly around the Moon inside Orion, practicing piloting the spacecraft and validating the spacecraft’s life support systems. The Artemis II crew includes: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen. 

As we look ahead to Artemis II, we build upon the incredible success of the Artemis I mission and recognize the hard work and achievements of the entire Artemis team. Go Artemis!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Robin Sloan’s “Moonbound”

On June 20, I'm keynoting the LOCUS AWARDS in OAKLAND.

Robin Sloan has a well-deserved reputation as a sparkly, fizzy writer, the kind of person who can tell a smart/smartass story infused with fantasy-genre whimsy but grounded in high-tech, contemporary settings (think here of Charlie Jane Anders' gorgeous All the Birds In the Sky):

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/01/26/charlie-jane-anderss-all-the-birds-in-the-sky-smartass-soulful-novel/

In Moonbound, a new, wildly ambitious solarpunk novel published today by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, Sloan moves out of his usual, daffy, high-tech/high-weird Bay Area milieu and catapults us 11,000 years into the future, to a world utterly transformed and utterly fascinating:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374610609/moonbound

Moonbound's protagonist is a "chronicler," a symbiotic fungus engineered to nestle in a human's nervous system, where it serves as a kind of recording angel, storing up the memories, experiences and personalities of its host. When we meet the chronicler, it has just made a successful leap from its old host – a 10,000-years-dead warrior who had been preserved in an anaerobic crashpod ever since her ship was shot out of the sky – into the body of Ariel, a 12-year-old boy who had just invaded the long-lost tomb.

This is quite a move. This long-dormant, intelligent fungus originates a thousand years into our own future, long after the climate emergency had been (miraculously, joyously) averted and has arrived in a world ten millennia years even further down the line. It must orient itself from its position inside the nervous system of a 12-year-old, and we have to orient ourselves to having an 11,000-year-distant future explained by an intelligent fungus from 1,000 years into our own future.

This is doing fiction in hard mode, and Sloan nails it. The unraveling strangeness of Ariel's world is counterpointed with the amazing tale of the world the chronicler hails from, even as the chonicler consults with the preserved personalities of the heroes and warriors it had previous resided in and recorded.

And in this curious way, we learn of the history of the chronicler's world, and of the strange world so far into the future that Ariel lives in – and becomes incredible consequential to.

Start with the chronicler's world: on the way to solving the climate emergency, the human race figured out how to cooperate on unimaginably massive projects (for example, addressing the world's runaway carbon problem). This pays huge dividends, ushering in a period of thrilling innovation, as humans and the nonhuman intelligences they have constructed collaborate to explore out planet, our solar system, and – thanks to a faster-than-light breakthrough – our galaxy.

A crew of seven are dispatched to the ends of space with great fanfare – but when they return, they are terrified and full of grim purpose. Something they met out there in the galaxy has convinced them that humanity must never look to the stars again. They blanket the planet in a cloak of dust and establish a garrison on the moon from which they destroy any attempts to leave the Earth.

This triggers a savage war against these seven "dragons" and their moonbase. The chronicler's warrior – the one who was entombed for 10,000 years before being discovered by Ariel – was shot down on a last-ditch attempt to destroy the dragons and their base on the moon.

Flash forward 10,000 years. Ariel lives in a weird, medieval-type village, albeit one in which the peasant-types all wear high-tech performance all-weather gear…and the animals all talk. It's a very strange place – there's a sword in a stone, a wizard in a tower…and an airstrip.

Even as the chronicler is trying to make sense of this anachronistic muddle, Ariel is marching towards his destiny. In short order, he finds himself in fear for his life, and then – for the first time in his life or the life of any other villager – Ariel leaves the village.

This kicks off the road-trip part of the novel, a real bildungsroman that sees Ariel, the chronicler, and a whole Wizard-of-Oz's worth of road pals (including a rusty tin-man type robot who is part of a hive mind of thousands of other robots all over the world; oh and a talking beaver) (oh, and a dead guy) (and there's an elk with a symbiotic beehive in its antlers that dribbles a stead stream of honey down its muzzle).

My editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden once articulated a theory of how science fiction works: you have the world, which is a kind of grand thought experiment, and you have a protagonist, who is a kind of microcosm of that world. Think of the world as this big, heavy gear, and the character as a much-faster-spinning gear that meshes with the world, spinning and spinning, pushing the world inchingly around a full revolution:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/26/aislands/#dead-ringers

The chronicler is a perfect microcosm of this strange world, where dozens of great civilizations have arisen and fallen – the ruins of a great society of hyperintelligent rats turns out to be very useful on one part of Ariel's quest – and where the dragons brood overall, a menace in the sky that the Earth's inhabitants have all but forgotten, but whom the chronicler can't ignore.

Sloan is really having a lot of fun with his talking animals; his transdimensional gods; his space-maddened, murderous lunar AIs. On the way, he's doing all kinds of really cool tricks – like asking us to really sit with the idea of giving moral consideration to the nonhuman world, including "beings" we currently think of as inanimate objects. This is a great riff:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/07/more-than-human/#umwelt

Sloan's debut novel, Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, mixed the tropes and sensibilities of tech culture with a beautiful, escapist fantasy, a "curious little magic shop" tale that was absolutely delightful:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/11/16/mr-penumbras-24-hour-bookstore-the-perfect-nerdish-fantasy/

And with Sourdough, Sloan's second book, he took that same fascination with the numinous (and with nerdy, obsessive hobbies) to the microscopic plane, with a tale of microorganisms and mystery:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/05/sourdough-a-delicious-story-about-nerdism-and-the-flesh-by-robin-mr-penumbra-sloan/

Moonbound delivers Sloan's third – and best! – fusion of fantasy and science fiction, delving deep into the meaning of personhood, language and moral agency with a road-trip story that visits a dazzling collection of wildly imaginative settings and societies in an epic quest to slay the dragons on the moon.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/11/penumbraverse/#middle-anth

[us3rnam3-r3dact3d]

I’m back on my Redacted shit, here are some Post Inversion headcanons

As a note, I’m not a doctor. I did some cursory googling about the medical stuff, but I very well might be wrong. On that note TW: injury, some discussion of… guts… and general angst.

David feels weird for days after the Inversion, like there’s something moving around inside of him. At random points during the day, he’ll stop what he’s doing, press his hand to his chest, and hold his breath until it passes. He asks Sam about it, and Sam explains; “You were essentially disemboweled, David. We had to put parts of you back in while we were underground. In surgery and in major healing, we usually take the time to arrange the organs carefully. But… we didn’t have the time. You bleeding out was the bigger concern. But your organs know where they’re supposed to be. What you’re feeling is everything… finding it’s way back.” David nodded and thanked him, and promptly locked himself in the bathroom and vomited for half an hour.

The entire pack stayed at David and Angel’s house for about two weeks post Inversion. Asher and Christian were the worst off, and spent pretty much the whole time sleeping on the sectional in the living room. At some point, somebody turned on Family Guy for background noise and it ran uninterrupted for pretty much the whole two weeks. Now, Ash and Christian have very intense opinions about Family Guy, and Ash claims that he very strange, Family Guy themed dreams to this day from how much he slept with it playing in the background. David is still angry that his recommended feed on Hulu is forever changed because of this.

Sam doesn’t sleep for a week after. It starts innocent enough, just him trying to run interference between Vincent and his new progeny and the pack being largely down for the count. He and Darlin’ end up taking a lot on in the days following the Inversion since they’re on their feet and, largely, in one piece. He gets pretty far running on fumes, but Vincent catches him after a week. Sam had been staying with him to help with Lovely, and Vincent walked in to see him staring motionlessly into the fridge. Vincent didn’t know how long he’d been there, but after calling Sam’s name and getting no response, he starts timing it. When they hit fifteen minutes, he escorted Sam to the nearest flat surface and forces him to sleep.

Damien developed very bad sleep paralysis after the Inversion. Almost every night, he would wake up freezing cold and to a shade hovering over his bed, claws extended getting ready to tear him into ribbons all over again. It would take two or three minutes for him to break out of it, and even longer for him to convince himself that the shade wasn’t real. He took to sleeping with all of his lights on and his heat turned up. It got better when he moved in with Huxley, but it never goes away entirely. It gets worse in the winter, especially when he’s reminded about the Inversion in some way. The Moonbound Solstice is particularly difficult.

[markerofthemidnight]

So, I was bored and looking around the ‘net for something to draw, when I found this awesome “draw six characters like this” template on a random Reddit post.

Anyways, even though I had to look up what almost all of these prompts were, I really liked essentially all the potential designs that could come out of them based off of my quick Google searches, so I went ahead and did it!

This whole thing took me a total of NINE HOURS, making it the longest time it’s ever taken me to finish any singular artwork. As you can see, I also finally figured out how to upload images onto canvases on ibisPaint X! THE POWER I NOW WIELD!

(basic rundown of designs under cut)

B-Side Wiggly - Most B-Side designs are basically just “the character but with a different colour scheme and a few new accessories”, at least from what I’ve seen. I don’t know why I chose Tinky’s colour scheme specifically, but I like the mix between blue and gold.

Naturally, as this is a B-Side design, I gave him a microphone for the whole… rapping thing. I also replaced his coral crown with a dollar store paper one, turned the frown on his fur pattern upside-down, and you can’t really see it because of the pose, but he also has Wiley’s dog tag necklace.

Dark World Adam - This was the only form I didn’t look up, but mainly because I knew even if I did, I wouldn’t get much out of it. We haven’t seen enough Dark World designs to be able to see much consistency from them.

The stripes on his horns kinda looking like an Imp’s (and being pieced with jewels because if his horns were real he’d totally do that) and his wings being more demon-y was intentional, but him kinda dressing like Toriel wasn’t. I just thought his robe being dark purple with flames on the sleeves and the Delta Rune on his chest would be fitting- a complete coincidence, but a fairly fitting one nonetheless!

Tainted Tozu - This one’s kind of a bastardisation of Tainted forms, because all I did was look it up once and go, “Ah, yes. I have to make one of my favourite characters look like a character from a bad creepypasta with some shoehorned-in religious symbolism.”

Naturally, Tozu was the only fitting option for that. I gave his mask a black half to call back to his OG design, turned his fake horns into real horns, and turned the X on his cape into a real X made of blood. I also went ABSOLUTELY HARD on making his eye look as creepy as possible without overdoing it- I think I did well!

Shimmering Pomni - Now, I didn’t technically need to look this one up, but I haven’t touched Terraria in a while so I needed a recap on what exactly Shimmer forms looked like. I was surprised to see that a fair bunch of them are actually references to various other games- with that, I was left with only one option.

Gave her cape a star design on its interior… mainly because it looked good, but also because the Star Cloak exists, and no matter how subtle it was, I needed to throw some Terraria stuff in there SOMEHOW. Hence the presence of the little magical girl stars around her: no matter how much of a Deltarune reference it seems, it’s still a Shimmer design at heart.

Moonbound Mind - Looked up what exactly a Moonbound design was only to quickly see that they are ABSOLUTELY AWESOME holy fuck I love this aesthetic???

Naturally, there was noone more fitting for a Moonbound Design than… the Sun. What, did you think I’d say Heart? Gave him a nice little royal design (he’s the ruler of everything in the end~) …and I don’t know why I made that moss so sparkly, but. It looks good. I like sparkly things, alright?!

Mirror Dimension Myke - That’ll only make sense to people who have been following me for the past few months, but that’s right! Myke’s a Visitant in the Mirror Dimension! A fairly sadistic and hostile Visitant, but… hey, it’s Myke, what were you expecting?

I chose the Mirror Dimension specifically for this free space… pretty much because I wanted another excuse to talk about it. The thought process behind his design was basically just “make him look like a really cool superhero”, fitting for a defender of the truth such as himself.

The visor was inspired by Peridot from Steven Universe, what with the similar colour schemes they have, and… hey- hey Myke, THE TEMPLATE! STAY INSIDE THE TEMPLATE, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

[itsyourstarboy]

Freebound

(Redacted Audio fanfic—1247 words)

Summary: Its the moonbound solstice, and Freelancer is freebound. Watch them cause chaos, on accident and on purpose.

Read here on Ao3

—

I.

The sunlight streamed through the curtains above the bed, cascading a golden glow across the room. Gavin, still dazed with sleep, stretched out an arm to pull his deviant close. His outstretched hand met cold sheets, and his brow furrowed as he felt around, cracking an eye open in confusion.

“Deviant?” He softly called.

When he was met with silence, he got up. It wasn’t like them to leave him in bed all alone. Quickly finding his pants that were discarded the night before, he exited their bedroom. Where were they?

As he neared the kitchen, he picked up on their aura. It was bouncing off the walls, feeling strong one minute, and practically nonexistent the next.

“Deviant?” He softly called, again.

They turned to him, a small smile on their face, “g’mornin’.”

The kitchen was… well, it wasn’t a mess, per say. It was… different.

“What are you doing in here, love?” Gavin asked.

“I’m rearranging the cabinets.”

“At 7am?”

Freelancer stared at him for a moment, “yeah.”

Gavin suppressed a chuckle, “may I ask why?”

“Well, I woke up this morning and I felt like I had bees in my bones, so I went to the grocery store down the street to buy six pounds of butter. Then when I got home, I accidentally set the couch on fire. Went shopping for one online, but I think I ordered 20.”

Gavin was speechless. “H-how long have you been awake?”

“1:14 am,” they laughed out in a sigh. They looked so tired.

“When you told me the solstices were often… interesting for you, this is not what I expected.”

“There is never a way to predict what may happen, I am a slave to my core for the remainder of this solstice. I think I just caused the large oak tree outside to become an even larger oak tree.”

At that, the ground shook, and Gavin’s eyes went wide.

“How about we go back to bed for a bit?”

II.

Lasko was doing paperwork on his coffee table. Nothing too strenuous—he was sunbound after all—just some stuff to keep him occupied while he felt like a dry apple slice.

Freelancer walked in the door, “hey, Lasko-babe.”

“Wh- oh. Hi, Freelancer. What are you doing here? And why didn’t you knock? N-not that I’m upset you're here, I mean, I-I’m always happy to see you, it’s just that you’re not exactly the type to just invite yourself into someone’s apartment… At least- at least I think you're n-not… are you?”

They sighed with a tired smile, “yeah I know, m’sorry. I would’ve knocked, but it’s too… too much. Too noise. M- no- that’s not… words.”

Lasko stood as his friend swayed on their feet, “are- are you f-feeling? Alright? Pft- no, what am I saying? Of course you’re not, it’s the solstice. Com- come sit down, how did you even get here, anyway?”

“Mmm,” Freelancer hummed as Lasko forced them to sit on the couch. They immediately sunk into the cushions, “I was feeling up, an’ I wanted to come hang out with you, but halfway here I felt not-up.”

“Not-up?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean- I guess that makes sense? Y-you are a freelancer, so you’re going to feel all kinds of… ‘ups’ and downs. M- Magically, anyway.”

“M’yeah, my magic has been ups and downs,” they mumbled, leaning into Lasko as he sat next to them. “I used psychokinesis to launch my phone into orbit.”

III.

Huxley was laying on his side, his head propped up on his arm, and his fingers threading through Damien’s hair. He was happy taking care of him like this. Right here, in this moment, with his boyfriend curled up next to him.

There was a knock at the front door.

“Are you gonna get that?” Damien mumbled when Huxley made no attempt at getting up.

“No,” he sighed contentedly, “whoever it is can just come back later.”

It would turn out that Huxley wouldn’t need to get the door, as whoever had knocked opened it for themself.

“The heck…?” Huxley said, sitting up slightly.

A familiar voice rang through the house, “Huuuuux? Damiiii?”

The two boys sighed in relief, glad that the home intruder was just Freelancer. Sweet, innocent Freelancer-

“Are either of you here? I think I drained the town's water supply.”

Huxley immediately sat up, telling Dames that he would be right back. The fire elemental could only let out an affirmative hum in response as he tiredly laughed at the freelancer's antics.

Entering the front room, Huxley found Freelancer hovering by a window.

“Freelancer? Dude- why are you all wet??”

They turned to him, panting heavily, “I was walking here from Damien’s place, and the Dahlia Spring decided to start chasing me, so I started running, but that made the water faster, so I jumped into your neighbor's pool to escape.”

Huxley slowly approached the window, “holy shi- Freelancer, the entire street is flooded!”

“I knowww,” they whined, “I’m sorry. I would clean it up but I’m afraid I’ll level the entire neighborhood.”

“Okay, well… let- lets just get you dried off,” Hux said, taking Freelancer’s hand to lead them to the bathroom.

“Wait, wait,” they pulled away, “is Damien here?”

“Uh- yeah, he’s resting in the bedroom.”

Freelancer made their way to the room and peeked their head through the doorway to see Damien all bundled up, “oh god that’s adorable. Is he wearing your sweatshirt??”

“Shut up,” Damien groaned, his voice all muffled from the blankets. “Why are you here?”

Huxley appeared next to them with a towel, “jeez, dude. You’re freezing.”

“It’s the solstice,” Freelancer answered, stubbornly trying to push Huxley’s hands away as he desperately tried to dry them off. “I remembered that you’re sunbound, so I was like ‘Fireboy must be feeling like shit right now, and I, too, feel like shit,’ so here I am, to feel like shit with you.”

Freelancer paused, hissing in disapproval, as Huxley ruffled their hair dry.

“I went to your place first, though. Let myself in. I cleaned everything.”

Damien sat up a little, propping himself against the pillows, “you… cleaned everything?”

“Yeah,” they wavered, leaning against the wall, “and then I remembered I was looking for you, so- oh god-” they keeled over, “I’m gonna throw up-”

Before either of the boys could react, Freelancer had run to the bathroom.

IV.

Damien’s phone buzzed with notifications from the group chat.

Gavin: does anyone happen to know where the freelancer is? I swear I left them alone for five minutes

Lasko: yeah don’t worry they’re here at my place

Lasko: they randomly showed up and eventually passed out on the couch

Lasko: sorry I would have told you but I was doing paperwork

Gavin: it’s alright as long as they’re safe

Damien: Lasko, I think you should check your couch.

Lasko: what?

Lasko: why?

Damien: Just do it.

Lasko: um…

Gavin: ???

Lasko: I’m so sorry

Lasko: they’re not there

Lasko: I lost them

Gavin: how did you lose them!?!?

Lasko: how did you???

Damien: Calm down, they’re here at Hux’s place.

Damien: They showed up a couple minutes ago.

Damien: They’re puking in the toilet.

Gavin: oh thank god

Huxley returned to the room, a sleeping Freelancer in his arms, “Dames, they tried to escape through the window, and when they couldn’t they said, ‘I’m going to stop existing now,’ and passed out.”

Damien looked back at his phone.

Damien: Please come get them.

—

[starlitangels]

My Angel (Sent To Save Me)

More proposal fluff because... well. It’s rotting the brain 1.3k words

—

David jerked the truck’s gear shift into Park and stared across the front yard at the front door. It was not an unusual front door. He’d knocked on that front door dozens of times in the last... God, it’d been nearly four years now. Dinners, birthdays, pretty much every single holiday besides the MoonBound solstice since David didn’t have family to swap holidays with... 

The familiar house seemed so foreboding now.

Nothing had changed about the house or the occupants inside.

The only thing that changed was within David.

He swallowed down his fear and got out of the truck. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself. He was an alpha werewolf. The head of the biggest, most influential and respected pack in the city. He’d done that.

So why the hell was he so damn scared?

A long exhale. Another deep inhale.

He started walking up the path to the front door. He released the breath as a sigh.

Standing just in front of the door, he swallowed one last time, hoping the lump in his throat would fill the pit in his stomach.

He rang the doorbell.

Shifter ears, he’d explained the first time he came to this doorstep with his now-mate and he’d said he could hear movement inside before they could.

It was the same this time. Almost immediately after the doorbell’s chime faded, there were footsteps inside. David popped his knuckles as if the movement would help ease his own tension.

It didn’t.

The door opened.

A familiar, warm face beamed at him. “David! How good to see you!” his mate’s mom greeted warmly. “Come in! What’s going on? You’re almost never here alone!”

He chuckled awkwardly, trying to be friendlier than his usual serious demeanor called for. “I, uh, I was hoping to talk to you both,” he said, nodding in the direction of his mate’s dad who was chopping vegetables in the kitchen with a dishtowel over his shoulder. He glanced back on hearing David and smiled, waving with the knife still in his hand.

His mate’s mom beckoned her partner over. They sat on the loveseat while David perched on the sofa and failed to wrangle his racing heart into behaving. He cleared his throat.

“I, uh...” he started. “I love your child. I know you know that. We’ve been together for nearly four years.”

“Has it been that long?” his mate’s mom asked quietly. Her partner looked equally baffled as he nodded.

David also nodded. “Yeah. And, I can promise you without even a shadow of a doubt that these have been the happiest four years of my life. I was still mourning the loss of my father when I met them and not processing my grief well at all. And in every way, they saved me. They healed me and taught me how to heal myself. I’m sure by now that you’ve heard me call them ‘angel’ as something of a pet name. To me, it’s not just that. I mean it. They are my angel sent to save me. From myself, mostly.

“I love them more than... more than I have words to describe. I’ve always been a person of few words. It’s just a lesson I was taught. The less you say, the more your words matter when you do speak. Which... I think has been to my detriment in certain situations. Including this one.

“But what I can say is that the love I feel for your child is honest and it’s deep. I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love them.

“And... I wanted to make sure I said that before...” He cleared his throat again. “Before I asked for your blessing. I plan on asking them to marry me.”

His mate’s mom was already looking a bit misty-eyed. “Oh David...” she whispered, reaching out and taking his hand. His mate’s dad set his hand on top of hers.

“Son, you have our blessing,” he said. “You’ve been part of this family since the day they brought you home to meet us the first time. We would be honored to have you as our son-in-law.”

“We love you, David,” his mate’s mom said. “And, more importantly, we know how much they love you. We see it in their eyes every time you two come over. Every time they look at you it’s like they’re staring at the most amazing thing they’ve ever seen. You make them happy. And you’re good to put up with their playfulness when it gets to be a lot.”

“Heaven knows some of their previous partners didn’t,” his mate’s dad put in quietly.

“But we don’t talk about Michael anymore,” his mate’s mom insisted, tone growing hard and cold for a moment as she shot a look of warning to her partner. He shrugged nonchalantly. She met David’s eyes again, smiling with that same warmth as before. “And previous partners don’t matter now. Because you’re here, and you love them and they love you. That’s all that matters now.”

David blinked to try and drain the tears building up in the ache behind his eyes. “Thank you, both of you. I... know I’ve mentioned before that I don’t have any siblings and I lost both my parents. And your child... has become the only family I have. Sure my friends feel like family but... it’s not quite the same. Having your blessing to ask them to marry me... means a lot to me.”

His mate’s mom gave him a melancholy smile. “Oh, David,” she said softly. “You more than have it. We’re so excited for you!”

“Thank you. Truly.” David nodded.

His mate’s mom smiled. “Send us pictures after you ask,” she said.

“Or just come over,” her partner suggested, a bit more dryly.

“That works too!” she said.

David found himself smiling. If they were going to be his legal in-laws, he decided he didn’t mind that so much. They’d been warm and mostly-accepting of him even before he’d started working on his bad attitude. And ever since he’d started loosening up, they’d really taken to treating him as though he was already their son.

He chuckled. “Well, we’ll see how late at night it is by the time I get up the courage to ask,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to wake you up.”

“You can always come over the next day,” his mate’s mom said. Her partner nodded agreement.

“That’s probably what will happen,” David remarked. “Thank you both, again. I’m honored that you’d bestow your blessing so easily.”

“We love you, son. And we see how much you love them.”

“I do. With all my heart.”

—

“So,” I remarked as David came in the door. “How were my parents?”

“How did you—?”

“Your location is still shared with me on Google Maps, remember?”

David nodded slowly. “Right,” he said. “Your parents are good. Your dad called while I was at work and asked if I could stop by and help fix a loose shelf. So I told him I’d drop by on my way home.”

I nodded. “Ahhh. Gotcha. You get it fixed?”

“Yep.”

“Fun. Ready for dinner?”

“Yeah. I’m starving.”

I smiled. “Good. I’m almost done.”

“Wait... you made dinner?”

“Don’t give my still-burgeoning cooking skills too much credit, Davey. I’m reheating that soup Mom gave us last week on the stove.”

“There’s my angel,” he teased softly, wrapping me into his arms and pressing a kiss to my forehead.

“C’mon. Let’s eat,” I said, tugging him toward the kitchen.

—

Tag list: @zozo-01 @thegoldenlittlerose @mainhoesstuff @darlin-collins 

[fukanoy]

Moonbound Wes is so silly

It's time to Sadowes things!

[peanut-tyrug]

So uh

The new DST update right?

WE’RE EATING WES CRUMBS TONIGHT HE FINALLY GOT A MOONBOUND LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

[fizzy-tizzy]

WHATS GOOD GAMERS (first impressions under the cut)

Wes- THE FUCKIN HAAAAAAIR OH MY GODDDDDD. 10/10 ABSOLUTELY PERFECT MWAH

Willow- You go girl fuck that shit up. explode Wilson with ur mind. Fits in perfectly w the rest of the set

Warly- hrm… HMMMMMM…. It’s not a bad fit, but it doesn’t really feel Moonbound to me?? If the accessories were silver it wouldve hit more imo. He definitely fucks tho

[kesia-stupid-arts]

If the ghosts can now possess creatures that died...

[gingerbreadmonsters]

here we are in heaven

or: for you are mine, at last.

gn!reader, no content warnings, fluff fluff fluff (with only a tiny bit of heart-wrenching in the middle, i promise!). the blessed hala day is upon us! happy birthday beloved @daveyistheloml 🥳🥳🥳 i hope you're having a wonderful day!! i’m… not great at david, so don’t look too closely - but for our girlie hala?? i can always make an exception hehe 💕💕💕 oh, and, uh - do forgive me. i couldn't resist. inspired by ‘at last’ by etta james, which i insist you listen to while you read. david falling in love at terminal velocity in 1000 words or less.

update: this now has a (much less fluffy) companion, wrapped up in clover 💕💕

Why are you following me?

To tell the truth, David Shaw has never really thought of himself as lucky.

He’s been fortunate, you could say. Blessed with good sense, good looks, good grace. Fire in his soul, wolf’s blood and the call of the moon. Growing up in Dahlia as normal as his dad could get him, a serious sort of boy who became a lonely sort of man. Magic doesn’t change that much, when you really think about it - people are still people, for better or worse, and six of one is still half a dozen of the other. Ups and downs, to be sure, but not exactly a charmed life.

(That being said, some of those downsides have been quite… significant, you might say. Never mind. Best not to dwell. Today’s a happy day, for happy things. There can be time for that later.)

In any case, David Shaw has never really been one to try his luck, or what little there is of it. Rolling the dice doesn’t come naturally to him - he’d much rather the reliability, the certainty of a fixed outcome. Safe and dependable and predictable. It’s much more reassuring to know, don’t you think? Bullets weren’t made to be bitten. The unknown is a scary, scary thing, especially for someone who was never meant to be alone.

Constancy, unfortunately, is hard to come by. To be fair, it’s not helped by the fact that most of the people in his life can turn into wolves. That does tend to complicate things. Luck doesn’t really seem to enter into it, though - growing up doesn’t just happen overnight, and there are preparations to be made. He’s never been afraid of hard work, and there’s more to life than random chance. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and somewhere in the middle will have to be good enough. You might call it resigned. Forewarned is forearmed. He’d rather call it ready.

It works, for a little while. You know what they say about best laid plans. Nobody knows where luck comes from, but somehow, it never comes to David Shaw’s door. What does come is a phone call, and a tearful Marie, and the realisation that nothing will ever be right again.

(I know, I know, I said we weren’t going to dwell on it. Sorry.)

These things happen every day, apparently. Very common. He’s not alone.

Yeah. Easy for you to say.

A house for three, then two, now one. Fortune doesn’t smile upon him. Nowadays, he doesn’t smile either. It’s hard to grow up in freefall, and yet it’s the time you have to grow up the fastest of all. Eight minutes, and the world he knows freezes solid as the sun is snatched away. Days, months, years - it’s all the same out there, nerves shredded with ice, turning slowly into stone. David Shaw is adrift, tumbling through the stars into the blackness below, lost in space and running out of air.

Pick a colour. The chatterbox opens and closes, opens and closes. This is not the first time you and I have spun coins together. A losing streak can’t last forever, and the wheel has to stop at some point. Somewhere, in the dark glow of a world that shouldn’t exist, a thousand dice hit the table - and every single one comes up six.

The odds of bumping into a stranger in a fast-food restaurant are not exactly one in a million. What happens next, however, might be.

What is it about you, that makes him feel like… like this? How is it that you find him, over and over, sunshine in his moonbound soul? Maybe it’s gravity, that force that brings him ever into your orbit, that catches him out of the crumbling sky and leaves him lightly at your feet. Maybe it’s karma, some grand scale that decides enough is enough, shoves him gently in the right direction and repays its debt a hundredfold. Or maybe it’s something else, some fate or chance or fortune - and it isn’t his to question why. You come crashing into his life with all the dazzle of a shooting star, the meteor flame in his heart, and David Shaw learns that some questions, perhaps, don’t really need answers.

Once in a lifetime, you might say. Made for you, destined for you, soulmates. Fortune favours the bold, and there’s few bolder than you - if anyone could fight fate, it would be you. If anyone could defy the laws of the universe, it would be his mate, waiting for him in the living room that he bought with you, curled up on the sofa that you chose together. Was he made for you? No way of knowing, but he’s not sure it matters. You find him anyway. Nothing as inconsequential as destiny could ever stand in your way and make it out unscathed.

His other half. Marie calls you that, and he can’t help but smile every time, because it’s true. Astronomical odds, that his path might cross with yours, that he might walk together with you towards the unknowable future, and that you might let him. Isn’t that a miracle? The blue moon calls to him, wolf’s blood and all, and he finds you hanging it in the sky for him, right next to the mirror in the hallway.

See you around, troublemaker.

masterlist

So it's true - luck has never really been on his side. Whatever. Call it what you will, it doesn't matter. Let fate try its hand - don't you know who you're talking to? All roads lead him home, in every world, in every universe, and his heart is weightless in the joyful gravity of you. When it comes to chance, David Shaw has never been a lucky sort of man. But here, in your arms, he has never been anything less than blessed.

take a trip to the other side of the mirror?

this is an original work by @gingerbreadmonsters - please do not repost or misattribute

[taelonsamada]

Sort of spoilers for Lasko's audio?

Question. Are water elementals and air elementals sunbound or moonbound? I need to know for Research Purposes™ because how cute would it be if we had a situation like Damien and Huxley where they're opposites and they care for each other on the soltices 🫠

They in fact are opposites!! Air is Sunbound and Water is Moonbound!! So we very much could have the exact situation for Lasko and his new listener!!

Which makes me very excited for a possible audio in the future of Lasko caring for his listener on the Solstice 👀 unlikely, since that would pretty much be redoing Damien & Huxley’s, and I can’t see Erik copying the idea so similarly, but I love the idea of seeing Lasko step forward and help like that 🥰

[zestinator5000]

Why are we as a society not talking more about Wanda’s Moonbound skin. Like it’s honestly one of my faves from the collection.

[rhoddys]

we all dissed the moonbound skins but can we please heavily diss that max skin

CUZ WTF IS THAT???

THEY GIVE US SUCH A GOOD ANIMATIC AND THEN THAT'S THE SKIN????